Cooking units which are assembled for use and disassembled for enclosure in a container for facilitating the transportion thereof have been heretofore available. Such a cooking unit is disclosed in U.S. application, Ser. No. 378,111, filed on May 14, 1982 (now U.S. Pat. No. 4,489,706), by Paul W. Hait for Multi-Purpose Fuel Efficient Portable Stove/Heater and in U.S. application, Ser. No. 296,879, filed by Paul W. Hait on Aug. 27, 1981, for Multi-Purpose Fuel Efficient Portable Stove/Heater, now abandoned. The cooking unit is particularly adapted to be used outdoors as an environmentally enclosed heating and cooking system.
Other cooking units are customarily used on patios for barbequing and the like. Such cooking units have provisions for disassembling or collapsing to promote easy storage. The arrangement of parts of a cooking unit that is used in outdoor cooking is considerably different than the arrangement of parts for cooking units used for patio cooking. Since many people who participate in outdoor camping activities may also enjoy the experience of patio cooking, there is a need for a convertible cooking unit that may be arranged in a compact form for ease in transporting and storage and is capable not only of being used in a camping atmosphere to perform the heating and cooking chores that are required around a campfire, but also of being used to carry out specialized cooking operations, such as hibachi cooking, that are associated with patio functions. Such a cooking unit has been disclosed in U.S. application filed by Paul W. Hait, Ser. No. 06/440,984, on Nov. 12, 1982, for Convertible Cooking Unit, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,508,094.
The assignee of the present application is the assignee of the aforementioned pending U.S. applications.